jjThoughts, planning and beginning of the final mission (for this season) hj
Knights of the Night
626- BitD Three Different Varieties of Murderous Plants
And now, please enjoy Episode 626, titled "Three Different Variants of the Good and Good and Good and Good. Hello and welcome the Night to the Night Actual Play Podcast. This place in the Dark Story Meconation is written and run by our GM John. And now, please enjoy Episode 626, titled "Three Different Variants of Murderers Plants." Actual play begins immediately. Hello and welcome to the Night Central Play Podcast. I am your GM and host, John, running our Blaze and the Dark Campaign Meconations. This should be the beginning of our final score for this season. I'll be taking a break and moving on to something else. Players with me, starting on my left, are? I'm Thomas, I'll be playing Hadrian's Briar or Burning Briar while I'm on the job. Run away a Ruby and beam the air and a An Omnidisciplinary Saboteer and Technician who can produce all chemical creations. Brand inventions of spark crafts, objects of great magic, and hell, I'm a doctor too. You want it? I do it. Looks wise, I currently bear the shell of an accuracy man of healthy built and noble stock fitted with an open chested long coat, a pair of glasses and a tiny bit of thorny briar barely poking out of the corners of his mouth and ears. Also noticeable is a replacement foot sculpted immaculately to match a bare human foot. He has too stress and an instability. Hello everyone, I'm Scott playing Tesslyn Vale, otherwise known as the Bell of the Abyss. Tesslyn is a Saverosi Whisper who does the dirty work for the Archives of Echoes. She explores the past via ghosts with Lord Penderon, her mentor, and secrets in by her she is of him. She's a petite brunette who is partial to petticoats. She has flowing auburn walks, olive skin, and green eyes. To her mortification, she has a dead left hand sewn on to her left wrist, her hand lost in an experience that she doesn't discuss. Tesslyn has too stress and she also has a level one harm of painful cuts. Hello folks, I am Jim. I am playing a recovering silver tongue slide named Steven Bing, also known as Busy. When not getting into trouble and crew business, Busy spends his time trying to revitalize the finances of the Bing coal mining family. The socializing and enterprising handsome young Ecarosi Noble is always looking for new ways to profit from the good and bad fortune of others. He is currently looking forward to the day when he no longer needs to be disguised as the spirit warden Delegos. I am currently recovering from a long injury and have cleared up my stress boxes. And I am Tom. I am playing Esther Rowland, an ex blue coat captain who goes by the name of Ghost because of her pale skin, eyes and hair. She's a cotter who is a dangerous and intimidating fighter, but she also is defensive and does her best to keep the crew members safe. She is Ecarosi born, so she's been in the city forever. And she knows all the good and bad stuff here, mostly bad. Her current stress is free. I'm Michael playing Gordon, a young thin scovish lurk. He specializes in infiltration allowing him to bypass most security measures. Gordon currently has two stress. I don't know if I've introduced before what dueling clocks are, but for all y'all's sake, we're going to have two down here at the bottom, ones, the defenses, the other ones, spirit, warden, assault. These can go up and down as we play. Right now these are empty actions you can take will affect these clocks down here. First one to fill wins. These are loses, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. And I take it the spirit, warden, morale is. And to break and flee you, you are breaking it down by adding more. We'll assume both of these are already at their fullest and they're like HP tracks that we're subtracting from. Okay, so you folks are so preparing for this. How? Hmm. Well, I mean, if you're talking about preparing for this as the two different clocks that you put on there, we've been working constantly on the spirit wardens. Well, no, we haven't spirit wardens, morale. You're referring to the fact that they're assault on this place when they muster up and try to take the house of KELIS. They can be routed and they'll begin fleeing as this clock fills. Okay. So we're going straight to the action or we can go. This is our fraction. If we wish. I just wanted some since it's kind of finale territory, some. There's so much going on leading up to this. I'm not even sure what we're trying to accomplish in this whole endeavor. With it. I don't know if we want to defeat this house or if I want to route my spirit wardens or if I want them to succeed, I don't know what we're if and when we get there, I just want you to pretend to be a member. They don't care about this particular mission other than they'll pay you for it. As a crew, we're kind of siding on the side of the KELIS family busy, but we all got opinions. Yeah. I mean, I understand where we don't want to harm the people that live there and we don't really want them to find the art of the tree in the basement that I don't know if I even know about at the moment, I believe that Gordon and I decided to keep that quiet at the end of last session. Okay. So we don't know the stakes involved. We just know a friend's house is being raided by the spirit wardens and we're being paid by the friends to make sure it's not successful in the extreme and we are being paid by the spirit wardens to make sure it happens at all and that you don't die on it. We are hoping to use it to also rid ourselves of some enemies of yours within the spirit wardens. I know you had a lieutenant who is on to you and also a leader, but she's not going to come down on this. We're also thinking about Delegos himself and whether or not we want to leave his body here as in like he tried and failed and died in that or whether or not we want to keep up the roost or what. You're going to have to explain it to your employer if you do that, but they are we told to keep them alive. They had a job and it was made clear last week that we have not yet done. So you would be exiting early if we plant a corpse now. You're welcome to do it still. It just would require some negotiating. They do have a plan that they haven't revealed to us yet. Yeah, it sounds like we should just keep them on ice then for now. Okay. That sounds appropriate. I'll take your word on it because I really think you're the one who should get to decide that as the person who needs to keep living that life. Or you're the one keeping the guy on ice. Well, yeah, on a chemical particularly. Yeah, I developed a whole new drug regimen very recently. He's not going to kick it anytime soon, although it might have unfortunate repercussions that I don't know about because I just invented it. That's a refinement of one of Praxis' techniques and Praxis wasn't exactly forthcoming with all of his techniques. Alchemists in training. I'm a very good Alchemist. Yes, you are. But you're still training? This is true. That's a practice. Second doctor, you're always training. Exactly. As I was trying to say, but your language gets away from it. If we're going to defend the calluses against the spirit wardens, I will crush you all. Good. Get in the character. Then we should probably talk about some options using our skills and abilities to be able to best ward against this attack, whether we're going to be there or not, we could at least set up the defenses. True. Which God did Melissa serve? I feel like some overlap here. Lady of Thorns. Hmm. Oh, I was going to prepare some plant-based defenses since they're a botanist family, but I didn't want to intrude on their own gardens, so I hadn't fully designed them yet. I was going to work together with the Lady of Thorns without getting any specifics. So it was going to be some unholy abomination of, would it be unholy? Very holy abomination of plant craft and rune magic. I forget the terminology in this world for half a minute. Sorry. Heart craft? No, that's inventions. Arcane workings. And a very holy combination of plant matter and arcane workings is what I had intended, which I feel could work into their defense structures fairly well. Sure. So we get a montage of you talking to their groundskeeper who's headed by Roslyn Kellis. And I think the other side of that scene is me talking to Melissa, who was the priestess of the Lady of Thorns, to talk her into working some faith on these to get us something more than I can do on my own. Because the suffering of the Spirit Wardens is suffering enough for her, I think. Indeed. Maybe some gross science minutes as I drain blood from Delegos himself to fuel the arcane workings and the sacrifice needed for the Lady of Thorns to pay attention to these seeds. Yeah. Give her a taste of what Spirit Warden Blod, she's going to seek out. Oh, beautiful, beautiful symbolism. You know, demon assassin things. Mm-hmm. Cool. Some spirit bottles filled with some aggressive spirits that can be set to go off when the attack takes place to distract and maybe even injure or kill some of the Spirit Wardens. Do you think you could rouse one of their ancestral spirits? I can potentially do that, Briar. Mm-hmm. It's a question of whether the Kellis' would be more in tune with their ancestors because they do have arcane abilities as well and that might be something that they're thinking of doing. So, I was thinking of adding on these aggressive ghosts to the foyer area or when the attack takes place. But I can certainly question them as well as if they would need help since it's kind of a forte of mine, but I think it's also a forte of theirs. I just forgot one of them also works on the Spirit. No. What is it called? The Archive of Echos. Yeah. In the sense that they'd have their own experts hadn't considered that and he walks right back into his lab. Oh, wait. Now I can communicate through flames. Now what is the expectation of the Spirit Wardens folks on this raid? What do they want accomplished by us? They want the place turned upside down kind of trashed for any hidden spirits that they've been trafficking or have kept scrolled away even after their downfall. Basically, you can't change leopard spots. They still think they're doing necromancy here somewhere. Even if they've got a new business in plant work, they probably are harboring. How did they get so wealthy so quickly after their downfall? They've got something going on. Right. So I'm trying to figure out, of course, how to fail but look good doing it, look like we did our job. We did everything we were supposed to do, but yet we still come up empty handed. I have some idea now. Since we warned them ahead of time, there shouldn't be anything obvious in the main areas that could be found. So therefore, we can just say, hey, we looked and there's nothing there. You can take it a step further. You could have secret areas that you will find that are full of very insignificant artifacts or fakes even, but still makes it look like you're doing your job and you could organize that with them or some stashes that they can give away that will allow them to hide the other ones because it looks like you did your due diligence. Yeah, they definitely, I think, should give something up in this raid. Feligos, otherwise known as busy, should have something to take back. It shouldn't just be an abject failure because then they'll just redouble down their forces and come back twice as strong or three times as strong and attempt again if it's complete failure. It has to be a minor victory as opposed to an outright failure, in my opinion. Does that sound good to you, Degas? Yeah, like yes and no, again, if I don't, I figure two, if we find something in the house of callus that is incriminating, that would just mean we need to come back and find more or they are guilty of whatever we're accusing them from and the reason why we're doing it. Therefore, we were justified in doing what we did. They might be brought in under arrest, if that's the case. That's unacceptable. Yeah, so I was like, trying to think of a spirit thing, maybe that they're allowed to be doing that we find evidence of them processing their own ghosts to turn into, I forget what it's called, the electroposmic fuel, which is, I think, a minor crime. I don't know your city's statutes, but is comparatively like it's running a still, a good still, a still that kills ghosts. They'd be a bit upset that their works being stolen, but they would be much less upset than finding an artifact. Hey, I don't know. I'm just thinking that when you find crime in the city, you pick up one of the members of the crew, you maybe put them in jail, which we've already proved we can break out of, and then you rough them up and they get out in a week. That seems to be a pattern that I have seen happen three times already with our crew, which is so tiny as to, I mean, we do good work. But there's six of us and a team of guys that we own. They're much bigger gangs in the city. I'm sure that this family-- If you have a higher one to double, you go to jail for longer, just to make that clear. So this family with their pre-established history might have a harder time getting out. Could you maybe, John, give us an idea of some minor crimes that might be a slap on the wrist and satisfy the spirit wardens for finding something, since we don't know the way-- Yeah, some more of the land. What could we do with social role to check and see whether that's what's coming, or is the pipeline full of, "Oh, we got to put these guys away," in which case, we'll know not to try anything. My question is, busy is coming with his spirit warden group. Yep. Why? Was it busy's boss? Busy's boss put them in the line of fire because she's getting weird vibes from the Kellis family that they're getting too rich, too fast, and they might still be dabbling in necromancy. And my assumption is, yeah, that there had to have been something that you told Busy look for this. Mm-hmm. And I know that's what you just mentioned as a possibility. Yeah. Could we find a legit reason for them to be making money that isn't spirit-related? Or a non-legit way that's not really against the law. That everyone does. It's not a federal crime. It's more, they're using some spirit essence to make their flowers more desirable. And that's why their more culture business is taking off so well. Like a gray area. Yeah. Maybe something that isn't even a crime yet. And if we happen to know what the reason is that we're going there, we can also identify to them what is the thing we've got to hide and make it look like something completely different. Like you guys have mentioned. Tesla, you were talking to these folk about potential easy outs. Yes. I can lay down some lore first as far as what laws are about in this city. Distilling your ghosts for electroplasm is possible. It is per view of the spark rate skill. And if you're caught doing it without a license, you can get in trouble, which might have been what happened to Jewel. I'm not sure, but you did find her still kind of undisturbed. And then you bring up possibilities of gray areas that haven't been touched yet. A further lore about ghosts dispensed where Cecil is present and says, do we, we had to find some sort of new craft, as you well know, and we have this whole study of psychonautry. It relies on the fact that when people pass, their echoes reverberate in strong moments of what they've experienced in the place or among the types of things they would do in the places they frequented. We have been utilizing because we have to buy our pleasant somewhere to put in these trees and gestures that is glowing greenhouse, and we've taken to being rather selective in what kind of spirits we use for this. It's expensive, but as we've clawed our way back a bit, we got spirits that enjoyed the finer things in life. Excuse me, is this Cecil? Yeah, the elder. Look out of the house. We bought them from fairly gray markets. There's not a lot in the way of radiant plants that you can get a very careful mixture. So we had to look elsewhere in the gray market to find what we were looking for. But as we introduced these spirits that enjoyed the finer things, it brought that energy to our gardens, and the attendance is more than quadrupled. But I believe virtually every family in this city has to deal with spirits in that form of magic. And the vast majority of them are not doing deadly or powerful things, nor are you. So there's got to be a way that we can kind of... It's merely a gray market crime that might be what you're looking for. Right. There's got to be a way that we could minimize this, just to let those spirit wardens know you're over-reacting. This is not dangerous. We can play it out in court when that comes. But what if, as part of this, we discovered something that shows what's busy, boss, what's her name, warden Catherine, that looks very unfavorably on warden Catherine. Possibly. That's an angle you could take it. That's something I don't mind establishing through flashbacks. You all can write some history for her to enter with, sounds like to me. That's what we're preferably supposed to do rather than over plantings before an adventure team. Indeed. I had an idea of how people were what their avenue of approach was before. Yeah. No, no. It's valid. So I could place people when we do the role. Maybe Catherine uses the gray market as well. Some of these spirit bottles that they find during the raid that obviously come from the gray market came from Catherine's sources themselves. She didn't know who the buyer was, but she unwittingly fed into the psychonautry that the Kellis family was doing by providing some gray market spirits that enjoy the finer things in life, potentially. I think how you find this out, Tesla is that there has been attempted, and we can leave this for next season, you will get it eventually because you did pay for it, but you bought a ghost of the onchayats? Yes. She seized it at customs border. She did? Yep. And it was an official spirit ward in business. There was nobody else there. She just showed up in mask and said, give me that. She knew about it somehow. She played it off like business, but there was nobody else official there. And it's in transit at the moment. We can have you procure it from maybe your sneaky dudes, your rooks are out on a mission getting that back, but it'll be behind the scenes stuff just that she's tracking and kind of for herself procuring different samples. Right. And then perhaps reselling them on the gray market. Is that possible? Just that she's doing it, she's selling it. So what I wanted was I wanted the Kellis's to have purchased spirits on the gray market, not black market, that can be traced back to her sideline or her kind of hidden venture. Okay. So she has an organization that she procures these things and they resell them for profit for her to enrich her. Yeah. So she's noted or rather as being as degas has noted that she spends a lot of time doing her own archive of like a type studies on procured spirits. And it seems like after she's done with them, she does try to get a little coin back as a kickback. And some of them ended up in the Kellis's estate. Yeah. And that's what's found by busy tonight or whenever the night is. That's what busy in his guards find when they search the house is those spirits. And so you bring them back busy and are like, Hey, we found this. They have spirits. And when people do the research on it, they realize those spirits are actually gray market spirits, not black market spirits. And they actually have traced back embarrassingly to Catherine. Then give her something to worry about besides me, give her something to worry about beside you and make her turn down the heat on the Kellis's because it really led back to her in the first place. Prior laughs and amazement. This is a good spy craft right here. Yeah, it's good stuff. Thank you, prior. I appreciate it. So what do we have to do to make that happen? We just say it. We just speak it into existence. Do I have to do a role? It is usually a flashback is just about spending some stress. Okay. I think that that kind of investigative work is a little involved. It can be too stress split between skeven and veil or you can take it all Tesla. It's up to you. How's your stress right now, Ben? Mine's great. Okay. I have to stress. Do you have zero? I have zero. You want to split it one each to do the research? Yes. Okay. That works for me. It's not sometimes that the flashbacks was kind of, it made sense. Was less costly? Yes. Okay. The reason it's too is because we've now invented a reason for her to be selling things. Okay. That didn't exist before. If it's like I did this before and I'm like, no shit, you did. That's zero. If you just show up in time, that's pretty lucky, that sort of thing. Yeah. If it's something that you did while you were in the flashback and it wasn't totally unreasonable, then it could cost nothing. But okay. Makes sense. All right. He's Gordon ready to kill? Uh-huh. How does he feel about like this potential violence coming up? He's passionate about defending. Okay. We'll see when he comes to that. Finding the countless home. I have a question about the basement. I can't recall when we went down there if it was well hidden. One of their greenhouses had a bunch of ivy growing around and it was under a trap door under some ivy to this ancient oak. Pretty hard. That's pretty well hidden. Yeah. You could. I like the idea of setting up. I actually do it better because you are an infiltration expert. Yeah, I like the idea of setting up something that's less incriminating. I don't know if that we can dig a subterranean tunnel or anything like that. Just have something hidden underneath a different greenhouse or something like that. You could speak it into existence, Gordon, like just throw it out there. Just say they have others. I mean, like do a flashback and they have others they have as well and we'll put the incriminating spirit bottles in that area. They'll leave the trap door open in that greenhouse and so they'll filter down there and they'll find the spirit bottles and that belong to actually were purchased from warden Catherine and that's how they stay away from finding the other trap door because we make it obvious for them perhaps we could speak that not quite so obvious. I think that's kind of right. Right. Yeah. That was wide open. I guess you're right. Yeah. Whatever. You know this better than me. Yeah. Thanks. Mm hmm. All right. You tip the scales a little bit, make this wine cellar a little more obvious, put some incriminating stuff in there and you make this one a little more better hidden and at the end of the day, you are going to find yourself as the progression marches towards the house. What do you set up? I'd like the bird's eye view. So if there's an area I can climb to or just the roof for yeah, they have some glass. The callous estate is one of the flags on this map. If you double click it, there's a little picture of their upper floors. They've got stained glass that kind of like radiates out light from the various plants that glow in there and you can be up top that you're light enough. It's not going to make it in trouble. Okay. That's where I'll be and one new problem having like a rope and a way to get down after shit hits fan. Okay. I'm wondering if despite chance, some official can be visiting that would be sort of an enemy. Arrival or even just neutral, you know, like, no to the. Wardens. Thank you. Yes, the wardens. Okay. The spirit wardens are basically aren't allowed to operate in a Ruby in territory all the way down south where the desert folk live. So there can be animosity between them and a visiting dignitary from that area. What's your idea with this? Just to have him there as a witness or somebody that we can play if we need to. I don't want to get too complicated, but I think that's I think if you want to lean on the family to reach out and invite them for the evening, one stress seems easy enough to get that done. Okay. Yeah, I do that. That sounds good. Okay. Then this would be the Arruvian Consulate. There's a lady from there. I'll look her up, but it's not going to be irrelevant right now. All right. Where is ghost when all this is getting toward the end? Wherever ghost can be helpful and being defensive. Are any of us going to be nice? Are you two or a group of thugs that you can lead? So you might be gearing them up. They might have better that gear than you, but at least becoming familiar. So this is how to have any employees that work there. It's kind of keeping. There is house staff, and then there's security. They've kind of hired out a couple of newbies. And one of those newbies is a hull that has a technician on hand to introduce you to how to operate this guy. Give orders and whatnot. I wouldn't mind being in the house and I wouldn't mind being armed. So that's why I'm assuming that would probably be a best choice. Okay. The head of security, the watch captain, let's call him, says that I understand there's going to be bloodshed tonight. I'm ready for that as are the crew, but I want us to make good use of this thing and pats the brass shovel arm of this hull. It can spare us quite a few losses if it's put in the thick of things. And the reason they spent so much on that. Is there any chance that Gordon or Dustin would have talked to them ahead of time and let us know, let them know what we are intending on doing and how we were trying to keep them safe? Yes. That's why they promised you a group of thugs at your back. And this captain is saying, where are your thugs? Don't worry about it. But if there's a mess you want to stick something in, let's start with this guy. And we can provide backup. He's looking out for his own and has this big kill golem. This isn't the calluses kill golem, right? No, they rented it out, basically. Kill golems are legal as long as the spirit is acquired normally. This golem greets you in a familiar voice. Really? Yep. As you learned with Esme, hulls are bound by certain principles. This one, if it's being designated for security, is probably to protect that which is master commands. But Kristoff Beaumore, bookish, sadistic nerd that he has, his voice echoes out of this hull. What do you command, please? Is Kristoff the one we fucked up? Yeah, you gave earlier in the story. You burned his brain out. Yeah. Because he was competing for a spot on the... Yeah. And we found him useless as a brainless scholar. I think that's what we were trying to make him, yeah. And kind of sold him to become a weapon. Burning Briar says, "Cool to the stunned silence of everyone else." Yeah, I'm a bit unsure if we could trust this individual. But he's got to protect who's ever got the control keys. You've got them, points out. Yeah, there's a list of command phrases that the head of security hands you, the captain of the guard, gives you a list that says, "As long as you would begin the orders with these keywords, you can issue any command. It's keyed to these rather strange phrases so that it can't be commandeered by the enemy." Instead of in a language that regular people can't speak, I'm just going to hear us use it. Ideally, you would get up close. Don't shout it through combat if you can help it. Once it begins doing something, it won't stop until that which protects us safe. So you don't need to micromanage. But I mean, we don't really want to be in combat. No? Well, not with the spirit warden, right? I mean, we want to... As a crew now, these folk kind of expected it and hired this thing and the captain of the guard is just trying to make sure. Which I understand. But wouldn't we put it in a position where, okay, things went terribly wrong, for instance, the basement, right? Since he's giving you the keys, you can do that, yeah. I'm also asking my members' opinion. I don't know. Maybe we fight in the foyer and then drop back and let them look at the greenhouses and grab their goods and go. Like we put up a pitched, somewhat aggressive defense, but fall back as if they were overwhelming us to allow them to find the hidden stash that we want them to find. Okay. All right. As a GM, I will note that when it comes time for them to search, they're going to roll against your folks. It's probably going to be against Gordon's hiding attempts to not find the secret. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we want them to find what we want them to find. We don't want them to find the real secret that you guys know about. You can stash the spot behind the super secret. That's what I wasn't suggesting. If you knew where it was, true enough. Yeah. As this is becoming more and more evident that we're planning the nitty gritty and getting down to details, I want to speak to Gordon on the side and say, "I'm comfortable telling them that these calluses have a secret, like a real secret that they don't want to get out." It's not just the psychonatry that they're using for their horticulture to make the plants so vivacious. It's something more than that. It's something that they want to keep hidden and is a family secret. Are you okay with that, Gordon? Yeah. As long as it's big. Yeah. As long as it's big. I think that's something that we were entrusted with that shouldn't be just shouted out. That's what Gordon and I do. We spend time with everyone telling them, "Yeah, they do have a secret." It's a pretty big secret. They swore us to secrecy in regard to that secret, but it shouldn't be found. Here's where it's at. This is the pathway leading to it. If they find it, we want to defend that. If they find the one we prepared for them to find, then no, we don't need to define it. Maybe that whole would be best served in the passageway of that secret chamber than in a foyer or in the one that we want them to find, if that makes sense. Right. You mentioned the fact that we would fight them, fall back, and let them find something else. Right. I don't mind being involved with that to keep you guys safe, but this creature should be doing the truth. Not talking to me. Oh, it's talking to all of you. Every time anyone has ever said this creature they've been talking about me, what are you talking about? No. No. The whole. The whole. Okay. You aren't a creature to me. That's good to know. No, you're not even a creature. You're a friend. You're a teammate. You're a living flame. Important piece of the team. So that would be my suggestion is that the whole is placed in the secret secret passage leading to what we don't want them to find. And then if they find that we circle around and absolutely destroy them, like catch them after. Catch them between the whole in our forces. And it's been mentioned that might make the house of Kelis even more dangerous. That might, but not as much as their secret being revealed. Oh, that kind of secret secrets secrets. It's the big secret. Mm hmm. Anything in this land is treasonous. Once it gets big enough, don't you have a reason. I just wanted to run that past you all as a good decision and it sounds that you suggest as much to the captain after you're conferring with your teammates that whatever's never to be found is where this creature should hide. Right. And he looks a little gray at the risk of life in limb. But nevertheless, orders the servant staff to haul this creature off to such a thing. I can't imagine them bringing him down. There's like a pulley installed. There's it's a ladder. I can move the ladder out of the way and try to lower this thing into there. Damn. It just takes a holes. Yeah. I haven't built one yet. It is expensive. Yeah. Which is why they've only rented this creature. I feel like I could substitute a whole lot of arcane bullshit into it that the other inventors haven't realized yet, but I'm. It doesn't hurt being a demon. No. But we'll see when we get there. But they don't know. The violence, sorry, while we're all in a meeting, you've just made it sound like perhaps we aren't putting up the greatest of fights in the opening moment beyond the distraction area one. I have all these incredibly vicious plants I've designed that I maybe don't want to see through the whole house if we're not going to continue the violence through the whole night. If our whole point is for them to find the false, we don't want to make it too great. No, no, no, I have some ones that are showy and look like they're great defenses that will attract attention, but aren't actually that good. They involve a lot of fire, but they're very one note. Should the whole be guarding the greenhouse that we want them to find? No, because that will look like the big secret. Our biggest gun, our biggest defense is where those vials of spirits are contained and they will think once they force the whole back and they find the secret door, that they've found the secret. If we put him outside the one we don't want them to find, it's going to draw their attention exactly there. In my experience, that level of law only works if you have an agent in the field. We do have an agent in the field. Right? So we can do that as long as this is able to pull it off and scream, "This must be where their base really is, what are the defenses?" Yet to make any money off of the heart of Kotar, so their funding, such as it is, that let them hire this thing, the false plan, the lure more than accounts for the income that is required to hire this thing. It makes sense for it to be guarded again. Okay. Then let's do that. There was a major disparity between the minor crime they got caught with and whatnot, but it works. Busy, can you make sure that this particular greenhouse and this particular trap door does not get discovered? Wait, stop the pulleys. We've got a new plan. No, that's what flashbacks are for. This is a group talk freebie, so it's fine. It's just a funny thing. That's possible, Busy, to kind of make them say, "Wow, they put their defenses here. This must be the place we need to attack." Yes. I can't, aside from walking up and beating on people and killing them, make them not check something that they're sure about, but I can do my best to direct and focus their attention where I think it needs to be. That'll be good. I'm going to be a gardener in the greenhouse that we don't want them to find, so that somebody from your group does manage to stumble into something. He won't live for very long. Assassin, he knows. Gordon, can you give me a tinker roll to see how well you were able to set up the obvious versus hidden trap doors, the lure, as it were? Gordon, what's your tinker now, Dan? Press the parameters. It's before people get there, it'll be controlled and standard. I'm taking into account that you're already a master of this, so okay, then that is... Can we help? I rolled a 615. If he would like to, if he can get a crit on another dice, then it will increase the difficulty. Does anyone have some stress that they're really low on right now? Yeah, I'm not low, but they have a low amount of stress and can help with some ideas for Gordon to set that up. I got stress available too. Only has two right now, and has a huge tinker skill of his own, roughly exactly equivalent. I can very much understand you helping with the hiding of things in greenhouses as well, being growing the plants over certain things, hiding things better. Oh, hell yeah. All right, so I bring both my arcane or demonic, I suppose, expertise along with my artificer skills to help hide some doors and make some other ones more obvious. All right. Mark the stress and... Mark the stress. Mark the stress. Let's roll another dice, if you could, Gordon. Oh, so close. All right. We'll four on that. This is essentially a choir assets, you're getting security supplies, a downtime action. Your six makes it one tier higher than your crew is, and because you are already a lurk, I'm considering your tier one higher than the crew's. So we've got a three tier hidden, that means they've got to beat that to get through. Nice. I pat him on the back, nice job, Gordon. That looks great. Thanks, Briar. No, but I want to send people into these things, huh? Yes. What plants did you wind up putting out, Briar? As far as I know, there's no illegality about carnivorous plants. Oh my. And they can get pretty wild out there if you have the seeds for it. I didn't. But the mother of Thorins was enchanted by my descriptions of such carnivorous plants. Oh, she's well aware of them, actually. That's part of why she's still worshipped. Yeah, but the possibility to get there, she didn't have the tools and now somebody is willing to. We had quite a fun time. I think one of them is just the big pitcher plant that smells so fucking awful that regular things go away, but it attracts bugs by the dozen because it smells like something is dying there and that I seed around where we need to get people to leave as fast as possible and not investigate well, but also here there and everywhere. Don't want to make it too obvious. For the showy or faker ones, we've got a plant that is just me. It's just a bunch of bramble of thorns that can burst into sudden blue, blameless fire to look big and intimidating and then stop so that people will say, "Oh, these are good defenses, but then it won't actually do much because it's designed not to." Scarecrows? Yeah. Like some really terrifying scarecrows. And then I don't know. I think there's a crawling vine that constricts tighter the harder you pull against it that is just absolutely designed to tangle things into it and stop them from ever escaping. And that's the scary physical threat that he's come up with. I wanted to make just a big mouth plant, but I couldn't come up with any that actually would work against people. If anybody can help me come up with one, I guess we could come up with something scarier for the grasping plant than a grasping plant that will just strangle you to death. Picture plant with grasping roots that smells good to humans? I mean, sure, I could. It depends on if you really want to kill people with these. Huh. I don't know how hard we want to go. I know how hard for iron wants to go. I know how hard Tesla wants to go. Okay. So I don't have mitigating influences in my magical murder plant space. Just make sure that they'll take some losses, but they'll still get through. That's the overall goal. Okay. So you have a pitcher plant with an addictive smell that is surrounded by a patch of grasping vines that constrict to the heart of your pull. So when you realize there's a problem and try to run away, you get tangled. And this big, hungry mouth slowly warms its way towards you, smelling delicious and scaring your brains up. It's not going to take out a whole squad of guys, but if somebody wanders into the wrong place and the squad of guys certainly is going to get tangled in all those vines, three different varieties of murderous plant, one of which is only fake murderous. All right. So engagement role, you get one dice for the devil's luck. Is this operation expose a vulnerability of the target or hit them where they're weakest? I believe so with your flashback that you paid for regarding Catherine. Mm hmm, target is a lower tier. They are hired. So we're going to subtract a dice for that operation is particularly bold or daring. I think that turning an all out assault against a house into a faux successful investigation is at least daring and that you think that's going to go great, huh? Of course. Effect modifiers and enemies or rivals interfering with the operation. Let me check silk shorts. This is besides us, right? I think this is us. This is the role to see how well it starts out. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I think he's referring to the bit where we were talking about people interfering because that's all we're doing right now. Oh, you're definitely interfering. No, I was wondering. We know we've been talking about spear orons. We've been talking about house callus and you guys. What is there any fourth party that's getting involved that would bring us? Could we call in the help of? I don't think it's the right neighborhood, but the, the sisters, the Justin sister, the dimmer sisters, I was about to look it up, possibly it would cost you. What's that? Jim or socks? Do you want to bring them in? Oh, you're sneaky boys or skulks, uh, it's kind of dangerous for them. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. I don't think they're going to be able to take out a war like a spirit warden and do you have an idea in mind busy? Huh? Do you have an idea in mind or are you just wondering? No, I was just wondering if not take out somebody, but cause a distraction or something. I don't know. Maybe they can, um, it's something I would allow with the flashback, but I don't think it's going to sway the role right now. Yeah. How about I pay a couple of stress, call up the dimmer sisters who I have a vaguely positive relationship with and say, Hey, you think you could hit their wagons while they're in, either coming in or while they're, I don't think it would actually help if they hit them while we were fighting. They could cause a stink in a different neighborhood and, oh, yeah, that matches. They draw people away. Busies earlier conversation. That's hilarious cause I didn't want to cut you off, but when you started talking about someone else, I was thinking of them. Yeah. Actually, how about just one stress and I say, hey, it will cost you a coin to have them stick their necks out. It's not going to cost you stress though. Okay. They're busy that night. Why don't you do a big job against the I'll sponsor for. So you are going to spend that? Yeah, I have to coin. I don't mind throwing it in to help the final mission. My character is not freebie and this cancels out the enemies that weren't your fearing. Oh, so that is not a minus dice. I was going to say it should add a dice, right? Yes, adds a dice and there was an enemy interfering and now you know who it is. The reconciled planned on in the chaos, trying to open a spirit gate and flooding in and taking the heart of Qatar. Oh, I would have gotten so vicious. Yeah. You know about the heart of Qatar? They have a lot of the ghosts are very old, okay. Some of them might even be callous members who've switched allegiances. Okay. That's fair. Yeah. Why do we? But you now have a heads up on that. So that peters out. I think we've got two dice here. That's two. Yep. Two for them to succeed or two for us. This is your engagement role. Yeah. Success. Any success means you're in a controlled position. A mixed result means you're in a risky one. A failure means you're in a desperate position when the action starts. All right. Then. And there's no way for us to bump it up on our own. No, I've given you a lot to work with and you did give it an additional dice, but they were going to be mituses because we've been waiting for the reconcile to do something for a long time. Yeah. That makes sense. And the other things, the spirit wardens are just stronger than you guys. Oh, yeah. And et cetera. So here we go. Well, is it not helpful what the busy is involved with them? Yeah. It makes them slightly weaker. It drags down the average. No, no. So it only in the sense that he's trying to help us and try this and inside him does hit a target where they're weakest, which is why you have two dice instead of one. Okay. The other potential modifiers are like bold or daring is an additional one, but then there's an enemy interfering subtracts one. So that sort of thing got you and it winds out with the six. Wow. We almost five six, almost a critical going to plan. Then I am going to mark down the morale here as the spirit wardens. This is their holiday of their founding. They are, okay, the lights are out in every district, all the electroplasmatic lamps. There are occasional candles here and there as much as you are allowed to burn the midnight oil on this evening, but nothing strong, nothing blaring. It is during the new moon. So the city is just shrouded in darkness and fog and the only light is the fine lightning hooks of the spirit wardens parading down various streets, a larger than normal contingent from Gordon's estimation, which is to be expected considering what they're here to do is floating down the saffron water canal of Silk Shore, a bunch of commandeered boats for the occasion. The gondoliers refuse to pedal spirit wardens about. So these are nobody with a license. Just anyone eager for the coin is out on the waters peddling these folk during their parade, pulling down the various canals of Silk Shore. That is their backup. The contingent marching over the bridge of pedals from Laguna is the one that you're going to talk to. They are headed by busy who by this role has already made a good presentation of force. You are in a controlled position when the action starts. How did this busy if you could consider your first "assault" was rebuffed spectacularly? What made you try to come to terms with the house like Negotiate? No, you're talking about my… Yeah, you sent a group in and something disastrous happened to them and now you're trying to just have words with the house reason with them. Something disastrous happened to the people I sent in the house, Kallis? Yeah. They're already a little shook about what happened when you sent people in there and they didn't come back out. So I'm like the second group coming in to… The second wave you're headed up there to be like "Let's try talking" because that's what your people want at this point. They don't want to be the next group sent in. All right. The first one did not come out. Thank you for listening tonight's of the night actual play podcast. If you'd like to send us questions, comments or feedback you can reach us at a number of ways including Twitter @KOTN_Podcasts or you can join our Facebook page which is facebook.com/KOTN.Podcasts. And while on Facebook you can join like-minded folks at our fans page at facebook.com/groups/KOTN_Pant and lastly there's our blog which is found at kotnpodcast.com and please remember to join us next week for more mystery and adventure. Other possible titles that were available for voting on the Facebook nights of the night fans page were some really terrifying scarecrows here, there, and everywhere. It's a big secret. It's a double secret. You aren't a creature to me. This is good spy craft right here, and you know demons assassin things. [BLANK_AUDIO]